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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

They knew it was illegal

What, exactly, are you claiming about this that was “illegal”? When you singup for Facebook, you agree that anything you post might be shared with others on the platform.

The Facebook developer platform became so limited in 2014 that most developers (including me) left. There was no point in developing apps for the social graph that had no ability to be use the social graph. But even prior to that, the sharing of this information with apps, even those authorized by a friend, wasn’t “illegal”. You agreed to it when you signed up for Facebook and voluntarily handed them your information. Even the idea that developers were supposed to delete the information they had before was just a civil agreement between the company and themselves - it wasn't illegal. Facebook can certainly sue them over it, but there are no violations of the law occurring here.

So what about this whole situation is "illegal"?

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If this was about tracking and informed consent, then the illegal ity is there https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/facebook-...

There was no consent because tracking was not opt-in but opt out.

More recently regarding user personal details and lack of consent, again deemed illegal in Germany https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/12/facebook-...

The pattern I see is that europe considers facebook's methods to commoditize users' data to be unreasonable and will be regulated.

>There was no consent

Voluntarily putting your info on a free site is the consent.

Would you also cry "illegal" if HN sold your post history, which they have tied to your IP address, which they can easily link to who you are?

If it mattered to me, was necessary, and i was in the right legally, then I would need to.

Each country has its own laws covering this situation.

Giving someone personal information still restricts them legally irrespective of what they think i've consented to or their own definition of consent. The legal system has its own opinion.

A bit of a nitpick, but the Hackernews post history and comments are publicly available. Most of, if not all, privacy law treats public data differently.

Now the majority of Facebook data, which is visible only to a selected group of individuals, can not contradict privacy laws of a country. Despite whatever agreement you signed. Law trumps user agreements.

As an extreme example I can sign that I give you the right to kill me, but if you do that you have still committed pre-meditated homicide. So it does not matter what Facebook made you sign it is likely they committed (and still do) a crime in most European countries. For the U.S. the waters appear extremely blurry from what I understand... But I can not offer an opinion. If there is a lawyer/ privacy expert to pitch in this discussion that would be nice.

> I can sign that I give you the right to kill me, but if you do that you have still committed pre-meditated homicide

This sounds as if nobody can agree to voluntarily take part in a potentially fatal experiment, like testing a potent medicine or be a test pilot. I believe legal provisions exist here.

That depends on the law in each individual legal region (most probably country). For example, I believe Euthanasia is legal in some European countries.

Even the opposite can be true. Life saving medication may be illegal in one country but another provides it without restriction.

Kind of sums up my reply. Generally, if you know or there is enough suspicion the cure is going to harm or kill one and euthanasia is out of the picture then you are liable. That's why the whole process exists about medical trials. One nice window here is that you can in general experiment on yourself (people have and are doing that). Depends on the framework, but good point.

Anyways, my point here is you can not override law (or you shouldn't be able to).

Absolutety.

At least in the UK you can’t sign away your health and safety rights. Even if the job is dangerous the employer still has a duty of care.

Having said this there are some job roles that are excluded from specific parts of the legislation due to their unique nature (e.g. the Army)

That's a different issue, though, and unrelated to this thread.

It is relevant and related to their track record regarding how they treat user privacy, what data they have previously released to third parties, and what their current legal standing is with regards to the same issue, especially in light of Cambridge Analytica.

It's not, I recommend you to create your company account in Facebook and be horrified on the amount of information that you can collect from anyone.

I was addressing the comment "they knew it was illegal" and the response "what .. was illegal?".

The two links suggest awareness by Facebook of the illegality.

So, where is the irrelevance of the two links with regards to the privacy concerns highlighted by this whole story?

It's not clear to me how much, if any, of the work was done in the United Kingdom or by British companies.

If the are companies in the UK, or people working in the UK, the sharing or retention of data may have been illegal under British law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998

The UK won't do much:

http://www.bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-briti...

One day, the whole farce that is "you agreed to the terms and conditions" deserves to just die.

Almost no one reads them, so they should not be enforceable.

I mean, as developers we know when a session is established, pages are visited, and can easily see how long they've been on the page.

No one can read the typical T&C in 10 seconds .. let alone 1 minute .. especially without even opening the page! So the options should be something like:

[x] I don't care, just whatever dude.

[ ] No. Get me out of here. Because I don't know how to close the browser window myself.

EDIT: Found this as a way of proof http://www.pcpitstop.com/spycheck/eula.asp

>Almost no one reads them, so they should not be enforceable.

It varies depending on where in the world you are but its actually pretty unclear as to whether they are enforceable. Or at least, a specific set of T&Cs with a specific user/customer may be found to be unenforceable for a wide range of reasons.

Of course, the company that puts the T&Cs in front of you isn't going to tell you that.

> Even the idea that developers were supposed to delete the information they had before was just a civil agreement between the company and themselves - it wasn't illegal. Facebook can certainly sue them over it, but there are no violations of the law occurring here

Perhaps not in the US, but I'd like to point out that it's not the same way everywhere: I think the EU is moving towards another direction. There's a whole thing around whether a company has a responsibility to do due diligence around preserving the personal information of its users. Just because you gave them your data doesn't always mean that they can now do whatever they want with it (e.g. give access to detailed information in large amounts to third parties). Even if you sign an agreement, in many jurisdictions there are certain rights a company can't just make you sign away.

>When you singup for Facebook, you agree that anything you post might be shared with others on the platform.

There's no consent on behalf of the friends if one shares information about their friends to an app. Consent is given directly

Doesn't matter what you signed and how it relates to civil law, you cannot sign away your statutory rights.

What matters is how criminal law views this particular data collection in the context of Facebook's working relationship with this particular client, within all of the various jurisdictions that Facebook operates.

The article "What Colour Are Your Bits", is a pretty good look at this - http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Possibly referring to a violation of their 2011 consent degree with the FTC.

>When you singup for Facebook, you agree that anything you post might be shared with others on the platform.

Except you CAN'T sign away your rights in many jurisdictions, including this thing called HIPAA. So if Facebook sold people's mentions of health problems to third-parties... is that a violation?

I mean, this is the exact scenario people grilled Windows 10's spyware. But somehow, Facebook doing it, isn't an issue? What's the difference? I'm honestly asking.

Businesses accusing each other of illegality. How rich.

Yeah this is one of the worst part about this whole situation. Everyone screaming ILLEGAL!! and also somehow acting like Facebook is the only one doing this?

Almost EVERY free site is trying their damn best to collect as much info and link everything together to sell it so they can- you know.. make money.

I guess those people are instead willing to pay for virtually every site they use on the internet, right? Right? crickets

Yeah why are police going after that one murderer when there are so many out there that they havent caught yet??

it's not a binary equation though, if data collection were illegal, content and service providers would be much more likely to try other solutions

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